


All the Way

by Slanguage



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Coda, Episode: s10e14 The Executioner's Song, First Blade, Implied Destiel - Freeform, M/M, Mark of Cain
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-18
Updated: 2015-02-18
Packaged: 2018-03-13 15:35:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,963
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3387029
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Slanguage/pseuds/Slanguage
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dean must take the path that fate's made for him, the one crafted around Cain's--or, he could choose another.</p>
            </blockquote>





	All the Way

**Author's Note:**

> Warning: I wrote this on the latter end of a minor concussion, so it's not the bee's knees, but I took a liking to it, so here you go! Some minor warnings in the very beginning there, but don't panic! :)

Dean took each step slowly, each foot hitting the rotting wood hard. _Thump, thump, thump_ like a heartbeat so calm, like those so few nights where he had reached out and felt Cas’s humanity thrumming just underneath the skin, as fragile and lovely as hummingbird wings. These sounds weren’t like that—this was the hammering shame of so many years of guilt weighing Dean down, feeling their eyes on him, the blood on his hands a reminder of everything he didn’t want to think about. His head hurt, and so did his ribs. If it weren’t for the Mark singing under his skin, he might’ve wanted to curl up in a dark room and sleep for days; but now, he knew something different. He knew how it would end.

Cain had told him how this would go. He had told Dean the path he was destined to take, and Dean almost couldn’t believe he hadn’t noticed it before, how he didn’t notice that his life had become nothing other than the backwards progression of Cain’s misfortunes that would inevitably be Dean’s downfall.

Dean reached the end of the stairway too soon, a bloodied knife in each hand, and he looked up.

Sam was pale, staring at him like he was waiting for a cobra to strike. Crowley was reserved, observing with dark eyes and an unreadable expression. Cas—damn, Dean could barely fucking look at him. His eyes were filled with concern, and fear. Dean looked away.

His hand loosened on the knife, the one whose presence wasn’t pounding at his skin, and he let it fall. Sam flinched so slightly from the sound that the others didn’t even notice, but Dean did, because he knew his little brother better than anyone else on the planet. Sam had been the only thing Dean cared about for nearly his entire life. And now Dean was left with the sickening turn of his stomach as he thought about the way this would end, and how he would never be able to live with himself when it happened.

“Dean?” It sounded like Sam’s voice was underwater. Like Dean was drowning. “The blade?”

Sam’s voice shook in a tell. He was worried—he must not like Dean’s silence, and the way he won’t meet their eyes. He must be wondering if this would be the moment they were all terrified of—if this would be when Dean would break, and they would have to break _him_. Dean’s hand, the one holding the blade, shook harder at the thought.

Dean swallowed hard, but did not let go.

“Dean?” Cas asked next, and Dean looked at him.

Cas looked—he looked _old_. Dean had barely been able to give him a good look since his demonic episode, always afraid of what he would find in those revealing blue eyes, and it was like a hit to the stomach to see the lines on Cas’s face, the fatigue of dying pulling him down. Cas looked as good as human, a human with a little piece of grace rolling around somewhere in there. He looked like he was put together with superglue and string. Dean wanted to step forward, pull the angel into his arms, but he didn’t. He just looked back into Cas’s eyes and heard Cain’s voice saying, _“That would hurt something awful.”_

It would be worse than hurt. It would be worse than _death_. Dean looked into Cas’s eyes, even for just a short moment, and didn’t know if he would ever be able to live with himself if he had to watch the vibrant life behind them flicker away.

Dean looked at Sam, and Sam looked back. He looked more and more panicked every second that Dean didn’t let go. Dean still didn’t. The Mark and the blade hummed together happily from his right, reunited and thirsting for blood. Dean almost wanted to indulge. He could imagine how quickly he could kill everyone in this room. How easy it would be to go to the nearest houses, and kill the whole town as well.

Dean’s hand tightened, and he let in and out a staggeringly shaky breath.

“Cain,” Dean tried to say, but his voice broke, so he had to clear his throat, blinking away all of the tears he couldn’t bring himself to shed, still not quite able to look at the three people watching him. “He, uh—he told me something. Something I probably shoulda guessed. About fate.”

“Dean,” Sam said, quiet disapproval, such bright hope. He stepped forward toward Dean, nodding encouragingly, his hand held out like he thought he could just pull the blade from Dean’s. “We talked about this, man. We’ll figure it out. We’re fighting for this, right?”

“I don’t think I am anymore,” Dean told him, and there must have been something off in his voice because the atmosphere of the whole room shifted immediately.

“Dean, give me the blade,” Crowley barked impatiently, holding his hand out, his face screwed into a scowl. Dean looked at the outstretched hand, and wanted to. He really, _really_ wanted to. But, instead, he didn’t. He just looked at Crowley’s hand, and then looked away, toward Cas.

“I think I understand now,” Dean murmured slowly. Cas stared back, desperate.

“Understand what, Dean?” he demanded in response, but Dean just shook his head, not giving him a real answer. It was the best answer he could give, the only one. It would have to be enough.

Dean glanced to Sam, reaching his hand with the blade out to Crowley like he was going to give it up. Sam looked back at him, relief washing across his face, nearly pulling up into a smile. Dean took a breath in, and then a breath out.

“I’m sorry,” Dean said, looking Sam right in the eye, and then looked away just as he pierced the blade into his own abdomen.

~*~

Dean shocked away, flinching back like recoil. Cain watched him patiently, his eyes dark and demonic in a way they hadn’t been before, back when they thought to bring back the only thing that hyped up Cain’s killing meter. Cain looked truly psychotic, like one of those murderers in those true crime books Sam obviously spends too much time reading. He looked like he was going to laugh at Dean, for a moment. But, when Dean blinked and reoriented himself a little steadier, Cain’s expression was nothing but curiosity.

“That was the other way this could end, Dean,” Cain told him patiently, like a father, looking up at him while still clinging to his severed wrist. “You could repeat my mistakes—or you could learn from them.”

“Or I could kill myself, you mean,” Dean replied, but his voice was shaking. He clutched onto the blade harder, listening to it whisper the instinct in the back of his head, a melody of mayhem that Dean refused to fold to. He shook his head, a little too roughly, before he looked back to Cain, eyes hardening like steel. “That’s not an option. I’m not abandoning them.”

“So you would rather slaughter them?” Cain demanded, sadistic bitterness in his eyes. “You would rather go down the path I have already lived than raise that blade to yourself and end it now?”

Dean didn’t answer. Cain understood why.

“You know how much of a monster you are, Dean,” Cain murmured, looking up at him maliciously. “You know the same way that they do what you will become. There’s only one way you can save them. There’s only one way.”

Dean looked away from him. Cain continued to stare.

“I think you know as well as I do what must be done,” Cain said.

But Dean, shaking with bloodlust and terror and the relief of the blade, was done listening.

~*~

Dean took each step slowly, each foot hitting the rotting wood hard. _Thump, thump, thump_ like a heartbeat so calm, like those so few nights where he had reached out and felt Cas’s humanity thrumming just underneath the skin, as fragile and lovely as hummingbird wings. These sounds weren’t like that—this was the hammering shame of so many years of guilt weighing Dean down, feeling their eyes on him, the blood on his hands a reminder of everything he didn’t want to think about. His head hurt, and so did his ribs. If it weren’t for the Mark singing under his skin, he might’ve wanted to curl up in a dark room and sleep for days; but now, he knew something different. He knew how it would end.

Dean reached the end of the stairway too soon, a bloodied knife in each hand, and he looked up.

They were saying something, but Dean already knew what. He didn’t look at them closely, didn’t say a word, before he dropped the knife in his left hand, crossing the space between the trio and him. He heard Sam’s voice rise in pitch, obviously not liking his unresponsiveness, but Dean knew his path this time, and he was ready to commit to it all the way. He didn’t need to play the same script, because he knew what he would choose. He knew that there was only ever one choice.

Dean walked up to Crowley, looked at him. And then he held out the blade to Cas.

No one spoke. Cas reached out slowly, almost hesitantly, and took the blade from Dean’s hand, pulling it closer to his body protectively, almost nervously. The Mark screamed and burned against his skin, yearning for its second half back, but Dean pushed the copper taste in his throat down. He looked up at Crowley, his gaze stone, and Crowley didn’t need to ask. His expression turned angry, disgusted—and then he was gone, leaving Dean standing with Sam and Cas, who were staring at him like they were waiting for him to shatter into a million pieces.

Instead, Dean took a deep breath, and he smiled. Just a little bit. Just enough.

“Cain told me,” Dean began slowly, looking at the two of them, not quite in the eye but as much as he could manage, “that I had two choices. That I could kill all of you, eventually, or myself before that could happen.”

“Dean,” Sam tried to plead, thinking he knew how this story ended, but Dean just waved him away. Sam blinked, taken aback, and Dean couldn’t help but to grin a little, a feeling bubbling in his chest that he hadn’t felt in a goddamn long time.

“Fuck that,” he told them bluntly, grinning. “Remember back when it was just us and destiny, angels versus demons, and we said fuck it and chose it for ourselves? Let’s do that. Fuck Cain, and fuck the Mark—it’s back to us.” Dean looked into Cas’s eyes, and smiled wider. “Team Free Will.”

Sam looked stunned, skeptical, but smiled still. Cas looked at Dean the same way he did after a stolen kiss, and Dean felt the dull roar of the Mark fading even further back into his mind, the burn cooling, because this was it. If Dean was going to face this head on and challenge fate the same way he always had, then this was how it was going to happen—with Sam and Cas on either side, and the will to make it out alive.

Dean looked between his brother and his best friend, and he raised his eyebrows. “How about it, fellas?” Dean demanded. “Wanna go for a repeat performance?”

And, like they always had, Cas and Sam believed in him enough to stand by him. And, maybe—just maybe—that would help to make it enough.

From the crease of Dean’s arm, the Mark continued to burn like smoldering ash, waiting.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading!
> 
> My Tumblr: shortenedlanguage.tumblr.com
> 
> xo Kay


End file.
